Events & History

Last Kiss: Edith Shain

She said she was the nurse in the famous photo taken in Times Square on V-J day

November 9, 2010|Comments: 0

August 14, 1945. An iconic image seared into the national memory, especially on Veterans Day. It was the kiss that ended World War II, snapped by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt during V-J Day celebrations in New York's Times Square. It's his most famous photograph in a long career that often found his work gracing the cover of Life magazine.

Things were so frenetic that summer day in Times Square that Eisenstaedt didn't get the names of the nurse and the sailor he immortalized. The sailor remains a mystery. The likely nurse in the photograph is Edith Shain, who came forward three decades later to claim her place in history. Shain died this year at the age of 91.